Our guest blogger today is Randi Minetor, the author of more than 80 books, including seven in the Death in the National Parks series—nonfiction books about people who visit national (and some state) parks and do not survive the experience. She also writes about U.S. travel, hiking in New York State, birds, nature, historic cities, and a wide range of general interest topics. Be sure to read Randi’s other articles here, “I wish I hadn’t done that: Tales from the book promotion road” and “Amazon sales rank: What the heck does it mean?“

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission (at no extra charge to you).

Can a Facebook ad really sell books? One nonfiction author says “Yes!”

By Randi Minetor

Minutes after I created my Books by Randi and Nic Minetor business page on Facebook, I started receiving messages encouraging me to “boost” a post by making it a paid advertisement.

I dismissed the idea at first. The common wisdom I’ve heard since the 2002 release of my first book is that paid advertising doesn’t sell books.

The world of social media, however, gives us a whole new perspective on advertising, turning it from a broad-spectrum, mass-market enterprise into a highly targeted messaging system.

With that in mind, I decided to give a Facebook ad a whirl to promote my latest nonfiction book, Death in the Everglades: Accidents, Foolhardiness and Mayhem in South Florida, to see if I could raise its visibility during the holiday season.

Creating a Facebook ad, step by step

First, I used the book’s promotional copy to create a post on my page,  For the image, I used MockupShots, the wonderful tool Sandra Beckwith recommends that drops a book cover into any of the thousands of templates available on its site.

The click-through “call to action” went to the book’s page on Amazon.

Once I clicked “Boost Post,” it took me to the Create Ads page. I added a “Shop Now” button and moved on to the most critical part of the process: selecting the audience.

Here’s where Facebook advertising offers advantages I have not found in other online ad programs. Facebook suggests what it calls an “advantage audience” that it selects, but this is likely too broad for most books.

Instead of using this default, I selected that advantage I mentioned, “People you choose through targeting.” That allowed me to create my perfect niche: people ages 18 to 65+, living in Florida, who have expressed an interest in the Everglades, South Florida, camping, hiking, outdoors, hunting, or national parks.

Next, I chose my daily budget. I started conservatively at $12 per day for 10 days.

Facebook told me that about 1,800 people per day would see the ad. Advertisers only pay for the actual clicks on the ad, however, so I thought it very likely that this would not cost me much.

Results and tweaks

So you can imagine my surprise when I launched the ad in early December and the numbers started to come in.

In the first seven days, nearly 30,000 people saw my ad, and 408 clicked on the link. I watched my Amazon ranking numbers rise out of the basement, and the book became #1 in the Miami Florida Travel Books and Florida Keys Travel Books categories.

With 12 days to go before Christmas, I decided to run the ad again, right up through December 23. This time, I looked at the graph provided in the Ad Center and found that nearly all of the audience who interacted with the ad were older than 40—so I adjusted my audience target accordingly.

Fewer people—19,300—saw the ad, but the closer targeting generated twice as many clicks (see below).

When I looked at my actual sales on Bookscan a week later, more than 400 copies of Death in the Everglades had sold in just three weeks. (By contrast, other books in the series usually sell about 30 copies per week during the holiday season.)

Equally important, the momentum continued into January. People shared the ad on Facebook nearly 100 times, so it has continued to enjoy robust sales—especially rewarding for a niche book about true crime and accidents in South Florida.

And all it cost was about $270.

Pro tips for a Facebook ad that will sell books

I learned a lot through this process. Here are my five top tips for creating Facebook ads that sell.

1. Put your book cover in a great environment.

Displaying your book cover on a plain white background won’t make the book look exciting and special.

Thanks to MockupShots, we don’t have to spend a small fortune or a long afternoon photographing our books in movie-set conditions. It took me ten minutes to browse and pick an engaging template.

2. Punch up your sales text.

This came easily to me because I used to run an advertising agency, and I spent much of my career writing marketing copy.

I took the book’s back cover copy (which I had written) and boiled it down to a few clipped, declarative sentences with a throat-grabbing opening. You’ve got maybe three seconds to catch the eye of a reader scrolling through Facebook, so make that first sentence count.

3. Location, location, location.

Define your audience first by geography if you can—where the book takes place, or where your most avid readers may be clustered.

Ads that target the entire U.S. will not be effective at $12 per day—you’ll need to spend a lot more money to reach enough people to make a difference. Try to narrow that geography.

4. Target your readers.

Facebook is all about uniting people with similar interests, so use that to your advantage.

You can type in any topic to find your people: book genres (romance, fantasy, travel, true crime, etc.), hobbies, interests, professions, travel preferences, political views, religions, or other categories relevant to your subject.

Knowing your ideal audience’s age range can help as well—that turned out to be my biggest success secret. The more you can pinpoint your niche, the more effective your ad will be in reaching your target.

5. Set a realistic budget.

You can decide to spend as little as $1 per day, but don’t expect results from such a small expenditure. I found $12–$15 per day for 10 days to be very effective for a book with a fairly narrow audience.

If you’re promoting a book with a much broader reach, it may take more money to find them. Keep in mind that if the ad doesn’t seem to be helping you sell books, you can halt it with a single click and not spend another penny.

My nearly effortless ad campaign has given Death in the Everglades the visibility I need to peddle it to podcasts and blogs throughout the state.

The bottom line: If you know your audience well, you can reach a very specific group fairly economically using Facebook ads and see your sales rise.

Have you used Facebook ads for your book? What did you learn from the experience? 

What’s more, Invesp, an an online marketing services firm, reports that 92 percent of social marketers are using Facebook advertising.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

I’m thinking that advertising on Facebook could be a good strategy for many authors.

“Where do I begin?”

But if you’re new to this, as so many authors are, the question is, “Where do I begin?”

That leads to: What works with Facebook ads? What doesn’t work?

And . . . How do I figure it all out?

The best way to start is to decide to invest in learning how to do it. You will need to invest time, energy, and probably some money if you want to learn how to do it right.

And you do want to learn how to do it right. Otherwise, you’ll waste nearly every dollar you spend on this massive social networking site with 1.13 billion daily active users. What’s the point of using Facebook ads if you’re throwing your money away?

Because I’m connected to hundreds of authors on Facebook, I see a lot of ads. I’m going to be honest here: Most are bad. As in, really bad. I’ve seen ads with:

• Typos
• No “call to action,” meaning, something that tells me what you want me to do now that I’ve seen your ad.
• Confusing imagery.
• Videos that are so author-focused that I start to feel sorry for the authors.

I’m no advertising expert, but I’m in touch with what motivates me as a consumer. When it comes to books, it’s not spelling mistakes, vague or confusing messages, and videos that are all about the author and nothing about what the book will do for me, the reader.

3 ways I’m learning about Facebook advertising

And because I’m not an advertising expert, I’m learning about Facebook advertising at the same time you are. Here are the three things I’m doing to get as smart as I possibly can before I spend a single dollar on ads:

1. Taking a Udemy course. I’m working my way through “Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Mastery Guide 2017” (affiliate link). I’m watching the videos while walking on the treadmill, which is something of a two-fer, right? (UPDATE: Carol Dunlop reminded me in a comment below about Facebook’s training. Thanks, Carol!)
2. Maintaining a “swipe” file. I save both good and bad Facebook ads on my smartphone with a screen grab when I see them in my newsfeed. Most of my good examples aren’t from authors, though. They’re from successful information products marketers or marketing services firms. Start looking for ads from companies and products whose pages you’ve liked, and grabbing screen shots of those that you think communicate well or motivate you to take action.
3. Looking for information online. I’m interested in finding articles that help me understand what I should be learning about or paying more attention to.

Articles on Facebook advertising for authors

Here are some articles that you might find helpful as a starting point or to fill in some gaps in your knowledge. I’ve provided the title and first paragraph; click on the title to read the entire article:

Facebook Ads: A Guide for Indie Authors: As the number of social media networks continues to grow, indie authors have more and more platforms on which to spread the word about their books. But the granddaddy of all social networks is still Facebook, which boasts more than 1.65 billion active users per month, according to VentureBeat. And it’s this huge user base that makes Facebook an ideal destination for self-published authors looking to market their books and build their readerships.

This is How You Use Facebook to Sell Books: I read the recent DBW piece “Why Facebook Cannot Help You Sell Books” with surprise, and I respectfully disagree with its contentions. I’m pretty much the definition of a midlist author: I write full-time, I’ve hit a few Amazon best-seller lists over the last couple years, and readers seem to enjoy my books. I was making a very good income with the usual forms of advertising throughout 2014—BookBub and the other advertisers, permafree first in series, etc.—but when I turned on my first Facebook ads I immediately saw a massive spike in business.

(Note: The article above is by Facebook ad course instructor Mark Dawson, who offers three free short training videos here.)

How to Use Facebook Ads to Sell More Books: This is the third post in the series to show authors how Facebook Ads Marketing can help sell more books as well as build a viable author platform . . . . In this third post, I will be dealing with how authors can use Facebook Ads and it’s extensions to sell books and grow a sizable author platform.

Day 12: Keep Your Facebook Fans Warm With a Boosted Post: One of the chief purposes of marketing these days is all about keeping your fans and followers warm. A warm audience is a marketing phrase that designates a group that has already opted in to one of your marketing platforms. They have signed up for an email list, liked your Facebook page, or claimed an offer on your website. One of the best ways to keep your Facebook fans warm and engaged is to consider an occasional boosted post.

3 case studies

These “how I did it” case studies from authors are helpful, too:

Facebook Ads: One Author’s Experience: British indie author David Penny shares a case study of his own Facebook advertising campaign, which he’s using to promote the first in his historical crime thriller series, The Red Hill, set in medieval Moorish Spain.tip of the month

My Tale of Boosting a Facebook Post: Many authors I know are hesitant to spend money on Facebook advertising. Without a clear correlation between ads and sales, it can be hard to shell out cash when you don’t know if you’ll see a return on your investment.

Case Study: Amazon Best Selling Book in Just One Day – With Facebook Ads: Meet a contrarian author, H. Ann Ackroyd of TransomPress.com, a Historical Fiction writer. She is one of the authors who took me up on my One Hour Book Marketing And Author Platform Strategy Call. Ann isn’t like any other Historical Fiction writer; she writes her two books in a rhythmic prose format, which isn’t a common phenomenon among authors in the same book genre.

I tend to learn by doing, but this is a big and complicated topic, so I decided to invest in a course rather than use the teach-myself approach.

If you’re using Facebook ads without any training, I’d encourage you to pause your campaigns and commit to learning more about best practices so you get the most for your Facebook advertising dollars.

Are you running Facebook ads? Please us about your experience in a comment. Are they working? What’s your best tip?

Tip of the Month

I always share a “Tip of the Month,” a free resource or tool for authors, on the last Wednesday of the month.

This month I recommend a free and short e-book that I know you’ll find helpful.

Kathleen Gage’s Hit #1 on Amazon walks you through the process she follows to get the top category position for her books. (Note that’s category best-seller status, not all-of-Amazon best-seller status.)

Use my affiliate link to get your free digital download of Hit #1 on Amazon immediately.

Kathleen’s advice applies to fiction and nonfiction. I’d love to see you give it a shot.